president obama kicked off his second term last night with his state of the union address but does his vision for the u.s. match the reality of what america's going through that's one question we'll ask that exist. and he's the president's pick to lead the treasury department during these troubled economic times jack lew goes before congress today for a confirmation hearing and he faces a grilling over his close relationship with wall street details ahead. and it's back the cyber security bill cispa has returned from the graveyard we'll tell you about the proposed bill that could give the n.s.a. power to snoop on your internet activity. it's wednesday february thirteenth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v.

we start off today taking a look at president obama's state of the union address his hour long speech last night touched on everything from jobs to guns to immigration the president covered a lot of ground in artie's meghan lopez was at the capitol last night's asked lawmakers some critical questions. mr speaker. of the united states a phrase that brings the media to the steps of capitol hill year after year five hundred thirty five lawmakers some forty four million viewers all looking to hear one man's plan for our country's future artie was there and beyond the palm five the glad handing and yes the clapping by we had our team came to capitol hill to find out what the real state of the union is when the actual hill blogger said that he believes that this if you need a strong the state of the government is in shambles you believe that i think there's a lot to be said about that i mean i think one of the things that this speech

hopefully will do is elevate the conversation so that we're not just having these wobbles about you know basically self-inflicted wounds the question to me is are we getting stronger and i think the answer is yes not fast enough but we are moving in the right direction gun control immigration education and the economy were all topics discussed at last night's state of the union perhaps less popular but equally as important were the issues of cyber security and defense and america's dependence on foreign oil and those are the issues we're told to focus on with lawmakers last night first up drones the idea of these machines has sparked as much conversation as it has conflict with in the halls of capitol hill i don't like the idea of killing i don't like the idea of being involved in combat when we have a declared war i support the drone program but it's actually essential it's totally within the international law i don't care who you are you just can't. cause the death of anybody using the resources of the american government even under the best

of attention we need a framework a very clearly defined framework i think drones are a necessary tool to fight terrorism despite mixed reviews the drone program is flying high although the president did promise i will continue to engage congress to ensure not only they are targeting detention. and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances but that our efforts are even more transparent to the american people and to the work something congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz says is already happening the president keeps the kind the congressional leadership of the intelligence committees as well as the leadership in the house and senate fully informed as he indicated tonight another issue that gets at the core of transparency in defense cybersecurity america but also face the rapidly growing threat from cyber attacks we cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy although all of the lawmakers are t.

spoke to agree that something needs to be done in the realm of cyber security the question is how how can we balance a person's privacy and also balance our national security and economic interests when it comes to cyber technology it's not easy obviously and we're going to have to develop legislation that will attempt to do it and and with the understanding that nothing is perfect but no matter what law comes to pass one platform stands to be a functioning democracy we need a free internet and internet that's that's free of government or ference and respect for civil liberties finally climate change and america's dependence on foreign oil a problem president obama has acknowledged in every state of the union since he took the oval office and an issue he reiterated last night even threatening executive action if congress won't act soon to protect future generations i will i will direct by i will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can

take now and in the future to reduce pollution prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy so where is america's energy future headed we've got to continue to develop when the. solar energy in efficiency of our homes and. in the things that we do despite the overwhelming challenges ahead to catch up with countries like germany and china despite past embarrassments like slender and the volt at least one congressman remains optimistic we have pioneered breakthrough technologies in energy before if we do it again we've got to keep the home and we need to manufacture what we've created here at home the state of the union is president obama's chance to lay out his vision for the next four years but it's often more of a wish list than an actual to do list arts he will be returning back here to the capitol to find out how many of these agenda policies will actually be achieved in

washington. r.t. and artie's like a lot of peasant abeam are and join me earlier to discuss president obama's remarks during the state of the union last night and what that means for the u.s. and moving forward. we've seen over the last four years and give so many of these state of the union speeches every single time he lays out this really bold agenda and we want to say that everything that happens comes true comes into fruition but oftentimes that's just not the case certainly if you know the past year and we look at his first term a lot of those promises made and the prior state of the unions not all of them were those policies were implemented to say the least abbi what do you think i think that it's all like you said i mean. talk is bigger whatever actions speak louder than words you know i mean it's really just a bit of mrs obama in his first term you really do bring very little problems to fruition so i don't expect any different this time all right when it comes to foreign policy he talked about kind of minimizing our involvement in afghanistan

bringing the troops home so not this boots on the ground approach he's talking about kind of being more in the background working with our allies so that kind of sounds to me like the drone campaign or drone that's that's what it was a record number of drones in afghanistan last year over three hundred and so what he's talking about you know shifting from the ground troops to counterterrorism operations what does that mean special ops military contractors and drones so it's really hard to tell what kind of forces will see it is there a question of course is a will there be more transparency on the drone campaign we saw senator is now calling for more more transparency on this and president obama of course has vowed to be more transparent i guess we'll have to wait and see if that doesn't factor play out in his second term another thing that the president made clear last night is that if congress doesn't act he will meeting executive orders and we already see

that he has taken steps to do that he signed an executive order last night in regards to cyber security so is this a preview of more executive orders to come in what does that mean what are they able. patience of that it might be he actually threatened another executive order now is in the realm of energy so what we saw with the first of all with the cybersecurity is him saying that he wants and he he's going to do whatever it takes to make us safer and that means both building up our infrastructure but also in terms of innovation allowing people to develop the kind of cyber technologies that we want to see in the future in terms of energy he was very worried he did mention the power grid but he also mentioned that he is demanding to see more more alternative energies more clean energy he also opened up more pathways for cleaner clean fracking and whatnot so-called clean fracking but also you know he's really focused on getting this energy policy moving forward it's something that he's

talked about in every single state of the union that we just haven't seen you know play out yet in a way that he wants to know he says everybody you know has the chance to get involved in this and really make it the technology of the future but we're just not seeing that yet speaking of executive orders that kind of means that he's going to act unilaterally kind of bypass congress and we've seen a lot of gridlock in congress but also called into question is the power that that gives to the executive branch of the what do you think well we saw a bush give a record number of signing statements on executive orders and i was really against that so i don't want to be hypocritical and say that even though some things might be good that's the way to go because i do think ultimate power corrupts absolutely and you know make it executive orders that are kind of sweeping what the language pretty broad still do we see the private privacy protections necessary to really be comfortable with this executive order made on cyber legislation so hopefully provides the framework for the congress to kind of act and get the hint that this is the happen with privacy safeguards that i don't you know i don't necessarily

agree with executive orders being made the lastly if everybody's mind these days the economy right now we've got a seven point nine percent unemployment rate we saw the last three months of two thousand. twelve our economy shrinking megan what kind of new proposals did he map out last night if any law that actually he talked about reforming both the tax code and also reforming the entitlement programs he said obviously they're not going to be popular decisions and it's going to be very hard to get them passed but he expects congress to be able to actually get them passed he also talks about increasing manufacturing he proposed three different hubs that would work with both the energy department and also with the department of defense to kind of get manufacturing going is a way to increase jobs and finally he wanted to do a mix of tax increases in our tax increases and spending cuts in order to kind of get the economy back where it is of course it's stubbornly high with unemployment right now which is not moving right and so i guess the question is is this rhetoric

or is this going to be reality we're going to be keeping a very close eye you know you guys well you know out of the is certainly a welcome thing to the both of you for a way again that was our correspondent in lopez and it abby martin host of breaking the set. and senators today had a chance to grill president obama's pick for treasury secretary a possible vote today on the nomination of jack lew he's the president obama's he is president obama's chief of staff and former head of the office of management and budget for his ideas on generating economic growth to his experience on wall street all of that was on the table and up for discussion before the senate finance committee for more on this i spoke earlier with peter schiff he is the president of euro pacific capital and i began by discussing the controversy surrounding a nearly million dollar bonus lou received while working at citi bank. remember a lot of former treasury officials were at citibank look at robert rubin right you rode that company down i think they made

a lot of mistakes but look also look at their look at you know when he was originally appointed he had his own tax problems and it turned out that he didn't even understand the income tax because of the after i forget i forget what mistakes you may remember you had a amended return so it seems like screwing up your own finances is one of the job requirements and i think it's you know it makes sense because the u.s. government is a wreck we don't even have a secretary of the treasury we have a secretary of the debt because there is no treasury the treasury is empty all we've got is liabilities and that's an interesting comparison that you make that it's a qualification to be treasury secretary of course this calls into question who benefited from the taxpayer bailout of the big banks in two thousand and eight live certainly is one of the beneficiaries i should say. well the beneficiaries were certainly people who were loan money to the banks employees of the banks you know but the big losers i think were the american public the u.s.

economy in general eventually the losers are going to be holders of u.s. treasuries holders of any u.s. dollar denominated debt because in order to save the banks they basically have destroyed the dollar i think the dollar is kind of like a zombie currency it's walking dead only a lot of people haven't figured it out yet so it still appears to be alive but i think it's only a matter of time actually you know peter we do have that clip where he was grilled on this very issue today let's take a listen. explain why. except for bill to take close to a million dollars out of a company that was functionally insolvent and about to receive a billion dollars of taxpayers' support center in two thousand and eight i was an employee in the private sector it is in a manner consistent with other people who did the kind of work that i did in the industry right so he's saying you know i got pretty good comfort compensation but so did my fellow wall street. colleagues i was just following orders

you know. i mean he was incompetent maybe he was incompetent in the private sector and so he is qualified to bring that incompetence to the public sector i mean that's pretty much your requirement remember i mean we are as a nation in worse financial shape then those banks were is just it's just that we have a pretty impressive the banks didn't so we're able to paper it over for a while longer peter another criticism president obama. last year he during his campaign he was. kind of criticizing offshore accounts but it's reported that lou has one of these accounts in the cayman islands this is a critical. well you know hypocrisy again is one of the requirements for the job of the they're all hypocrites in washington just about him in just about everything

they say look at look at president obama's favorite billionaire warren buffett is always talking about how he wants to pay lower taxes yet he's suing the iris to reduces taxes and he's doing everything he can to minimize those taxes so they always say one thing publicly but they do the opposite privately right we have about a minute left i want to ask you what are your thoughts will his approach be much different than that of his predecessor that timothy geithner. unfortunately it won't be it'll be more of the same i mean basically what the the ababa the secretary of the debt is is to convince central banks foreign central banks and investors around the world to loan the u.s. government money even though it can't pay it back i mean i guess you could say it's a difficult job convincing the world to vendor finance a deadbeat nation but unfortunately that's the situation that we're in and he's just trying to make sure that we can keep selling bonds before the bottom drops out of the market he's just a p.r. man and ultimately what he's there to do is talk up the president's he's not there

to actually give the president solid advice on the finances of the country he's there to rubber stamp the president's agenda and make sure there's enough buyers for our debt so we can finance this massive expansion of government along enough to get him reelected or you know in the case of obama i mean they've already got him reelected maybe they think they can get another democrat elected in two thousand and sixteen if they can keep this ponzi scheme going for four more years i just think it's too big at this point i would be very surprised if they got out of dodge in time this time the always outspoken peter schiff appreciate you coming on peter that was peter schiff president of euro pacific capital and now to another issue that played a prominent role in last night's state of the union address cyber security after announcing the signing of a new executive order designed to strengthen cyber infrastructure the president made a push to for congress to pass comprehensive legislation focused on addressing the issue and today he just may have gotten that wish chairman of the house

intelligence committee mike rogers and congressman dutch ruppersberger resubmitting the cyber and teligent sharing and protection act better known as sis but earlier i was joined by our two producer bob english who filled us in on today's announcement . well this is a rehashed version then we haven't seen it yet of last year's bill that passed the house but president obama had threatened to veto it so it died in this is one of a handful of cyber related bills that is yet to be passed and it has to do with cyber security in particular in the cooperation between the public and private sectors ok so this bill was proposed last year and it didn't get very far there was a lot of outcry over a possible privacy concerns what differences are there. with this with this version we can only speculate now because the actual version will not be released

for a couple of weeks now that i've been told there might be a narrower definition of cyber security threat we might also see penalties imposed for the government for private sector misuse of the shared information in there they've also said that they're going to try to address some of president obama's concerns that he had last year regarding it not addressing infrastructure so we'll have to wait and see. i know that you got a chance he had to speak some of the law speak to some of the lawmakers about this because they have to say they were careful to point out that this is not sopa that it's not the senate bill that had an internet kill switch that the government is not interested in reading your e-mail your twitter your facebook stuff but what it is is it provides a framework for the cooperation between the public in the private sectors and it also gives legal immunity to the to the private sector if they use their information in other words the cops tumours cannot sue them for using that

information ok so perhaps that might not be what they're interested in but privacy advocates still might be a little bit weary of the a possibility there that they're the doors that it may open certainly and there is there was a tone of exasperate today with the privacy experts. this was on the part of the congressman that i saw and they just seemed to not understand where the privacy advocates were coming from in that they would were not really budging so i think from this standpoint where are they coming from well this particular ad doesn't necessarily isn't necessarily so onerous but once you have that framework in place it's very easy to change this voluntary program to something that's compulsory or to make other tweaks that really destroy civil liberties. this bill lets the government use information collected about citizens for national security purposes and we've talked you know when it comes the n.d.a. kind of having this in vague language that could lead to

a simple slippery slope or or that's what some of these advocates are worried about is that an issue with this new suspect new system bill sure and we have to consider what we were talking about the other day what happens when there is an emergency and an executive order comes up from the president it's very easy to take a piece of legislation like this. change it a little bit make it a little bit onerous for the american people so that's where the concerns are coming from all right cyber security we have the state of the union address last night and cyber security president obama did valid that that was going to be one of the things that are going to be on the top of his agenda and so he signed this executive order on cyber security can you tell us more about what this is and what kind of power this gives to the executive branch sure he's using his existing authority to kind of beef up the cooperation between the public and private sectors and he's carrying this mainly toward infrastructure so once you consider that the

president really doesn't have the legal authority to give these companies immunity so that has to come in through a law like cispa and that's where this takes place very interesting bob thanks for staying on top of this story today about was our t.v. producer english. and now do a look at the next presidential election coming up in two thousand and sixteen and i know we hardly got past the two thousand and twelve election but we're not talking about potential candidates we are talking about actions that being taken right now that could completely change the game the united states still uses the electoral college to determine the winner of presidential elections it's a complex system that apportions a point value to different states and most states the winner takes all red means the republican candidate won the state and blue means democrat currently maine and nebraska are the only states that can split their electoral votes but all of that could change so-called swing states that went blue in two thousand and twelve

despite having republicans in charge at the state house like michigan virginia ohio florida pennsylvania and wisconsin begin to consider changing the rules the change would result in the electoral votes being spread out between candidates instead of this winner takes all approach to give you an idea of what this would mean if these changes were enacted before two thousand and twelve of zero four that election republican candidate mitt romney would have beat an incumbent president obama to seventy six to two sixty two despite losing the popular vote by almost four percentage points after some outrage some of these states house state houses have backed away from the idea which has been disavowed by some democrats but it is significant that while other media outlets speculate on the players in two thousand and sixteen politicians are trying to change the game. well the manhunt for former l.a.p.d. officer christopher dorner came to a dramatic ending last night

a firefight at big bear mountain after that firefight a body pulled out of a burned down cabin is believed to be that of dorner and as you know dorner was fired from from the l.a.p.d. in two thousand and nine and he vowed to kill police officers to avenge what he called the. unfair terminate shet deputies death and the shootout yesterday brings the total number of to four people believed to be killed by dorner and in the suspects manifesto he details the culture of racism in misconduct within the department so we want to take a moment to talk about some of the controversies surrounding the l.a.p.d. to discuss i was joined earlier by tracy oppenheimer a producer for reason t.v. i began by asking her how dorner still has supporters even though he's suspected of killing four innocent people. his manifesto detailed a lot of problems that he had with the l.a.p.d. i think what was so comforting not comforting but the thing that the instances

described in the manifesto that the supporters really backed him on are things that the l.a.p.d. that were already suspected about the l.a.p.d. and it's confirming these preexisting notions that people have about the l.a.p.d. so we don't know whether his manifesto is factual his claims are factual but i don't think they came as a surprise to anyone and i think that's why people have gotten behind him it is a minority of people and i don't think there's any doubt that what he did i mean he's murdered four people now very tragic and i think it's unfortunate that he has these backers but i don't think it's all that surprising certainly there is no justification for killing innocent people but i want to ask you tracy what do we know about the culture of racism and corruption within the l.a.p.d. . well i just want to make the point that what went on last night that was san bernardino that was an l.a.p.d. but what dorner was describing in his manifesto about the l.a.p.d. about there being excessive force police if that was brought up last week when the

police actually fired mistakenly on two women and man because their truck somewhat resembled dorner is even though it didn't match at all none of the descriptions the race gender anything match joiners so this would indicate that they were trigger happy i don't want to speculate on whether this has greater resonance throughout the l.a.p.d. there have been cases of police abuse in the past that's not news to anyone but. i don't i don't think dorner was really making any accusations that about the culture of the l.a.p.d. that haven't been suspected already right and now. of course this has captured mesmerized the people and. a lot of very high profile case and it's seems like he wanted to bring attention to this but you got to wonder if this actually did anything to help the cause or what do you think. i think the

media didn't go it didn't really cover the police abuse cases as much as they probably should have last week because they were so focused on dorner and i think his own shooting spree really covered that aspect of it up however. his his own shooting it really doesn't make a great case for him because the excessive abuse that he's talking about in his manifesto is really really what he is perpetrating right so when it comes to the l.a.p.d. . it wasn't a segar it was no secret that this that there were problems to say the least with this with this police department do you think there will ever be a time when a police chief or a police commissioner commissioner will come out and say that there are institutional problems within the department and there needs to be change this needs to be addressed i think i haven't seen it they called it a mistaken identity which would imply that i mean this was attempted murder i mean

these these poor innocent people who are drawn into this that had no resemblance by calling a mistaken identity when they didn't have any visual confirmation on these people is sort of an error in itself and by not owning up to this i think i don't see the l.a.p.d. owning up to the abuse and the institutional change that needs to come about. and certainly pulling the trigger should be a last resort we don't really know what led up to them actually pulling the trigger on these people of course were not the suspect i don't know maybe wasn't an isolated incidents either i mean this happened twice with the trucks and there were other cases last week well we're going to have to see if this leads to any change here you see appreciate you coming on that was tracy oppenheimer producer at reason t.v. and. and that it will public figure who always gets the mainstream media buzzing sarah palin may no longer be a politician or a fox news contributor but she still makes headlines the washington post reported

that upon departing from fox news she landed a gig as a contributor at al-jazeera turns out that's not true now the washington post has issued this correction an earlier version of this post in the post your l incorrectly reported that sarah palin had signed on as a contributor to the al-jazeera american news network the blogger just cited a report on the daily current website as the basis for that information without realizing that the piece was satirical while palin seize the moment and responded via twitter she said quote she tweeted the washington post i'm having coffee with elvis this week he works at the local moose in la silla hash tag idiot media another tweet to the post writer once promised not to write about me for a month it was a good month for me and other. media and another one the washington post and

like minded m.s.m. and it's easier about as credible as well barack obama can't wait for tonight's state of the union to point out more examples hasn't always been the case in past clashes with the media but this time pailin may have got in the last laugh and we are going to leave it all for their buck for more of the stories we covered you can always check out our you tube channel and that address is youtube dot com slash r t america we post all of our interviews online there in full and you can follow me on twitter at liz wahl have a great night. i think.